Friday, August 30, 2013

Disproportional Wealth Distribution, Yemen's Recipe for Poverty

It's estimated that nearly 60% of Yemeni children under the age of 5 are malnourished; meaning that their brains can be permanently damaged and they would never be able to walk. Those children's parents are not able to feed them as millions of Yemenis live on less a dollar per a day.

In parallel, Yemeni officials - ousted prs. Ali Saleh, his sons, his nephews, his clan, current prs. Hadi, his relatives and a great number of Yemen's ministers fly around the world with private jets, siphon off the wealth of their country to line their own pockets.

Yemen's ousted dictator, Saleh's wealth is estimated to be US$35 billion, according to a report by Canadian business.

A satellite image exhibiting Ahmed Saleh's grand house area.

Saleh's son, the former commander of the republican guard unit (it's not clear yet if he still has that post) and the current Yemen's ambassador to UAE, Ahmed Ali Saleh possesses a grand house that's located in an area of ​​more than half a square kilometer! The area contains a horse stables and playgrounds. On top of that, he owns several grand houses around Sana'a city.

Over the last decade, reporters have always emerged about the wealth of Saleh's sons and relatives inside Yemen, the US, and Europe. That's just a slice of what is really going on. The names mentioned here are not the only filthy rich politicians in Yemen but they demonstrate the wide gap between the poor and the rich. Bear in mind, there is no a transparency mechanism to the public by the state to display how the national income is spent.